lecture 1 Flashcards
what is evolutionary psychology?
- Behavior explained based on survival and reproduction
- What is the function of behavior?
- a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective.
what is developmental psychology?
Change in behaviour over the course of life
can be shaped through
Behaviour, conditions
what is cognition?
the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.
what is cognitive psychology?
Explaining behavior through mental
processes (reasoning, attention, perception,
memory…
what is social psycgology?
Explaining behavior through the social environment
what is Evolutionary Psychology?
- Explain behavior in terms of what it accomplishes for the behaving individual
- it is adaptive
- funtionalism
Distal explanation
Evolutionary significance in terms of survival and reproduction
Proximate explanation
mechanism (genetic, physiological and anatomical)
natural selection
- Overproduction of offspring
- Variation in features and traits
- Inheritance
- Better fit of traits with environment, better chance for survival, more offspring
Fallacies
- Fittest = Best fit (not strongest!)
- Evolution has no foresight
- There is no set route or planned
end - There is no moral
Genotype:
set of genes you posses (independent of environment)
Phenotype:
observable properties of the body and behavioral traits (depending on environment)
Polygenetic characteristics
- Behavior depends on many genes (continuous)
- Combination of genetic differences at many gene loci AND environmental differences
Selective breeding
- First study on selective breeding in psychology by Tryon (1942)
- Studied “learning behavior”
- Stupid and smart rats?
- “No” (Searle, 1949)
- Unclear what underlying abilities changed…
